Fortunes & Failures - 03 (24 page)

Then, the heat moved away and vanished. Jenifer-zombie stood, pressed tight against the hard steel rails of a big gate. Sometimes she reached through, clutching for something that had vanished…from sight and eventually what little memory she possessed. Other times, she stood, clutching the gate, face pressed to the bars. Night came, and eventually, the rain stopped. But Jenifer-zombie didn’t notice. She simply stood there…waiting.



The sun was about an hour from setting. Shaw crept along the roof of the recycling plant, doing his best to stay low. He’d never seen so many of those things. It reminded him of the parking lot of a stadium after a football game ended. Not a blowout where the lame, wannabe fans left early. No, this was a nail biter that wasn’t decided until the final gun sounded. And now, the stadium was spewing forth its contents all at once.

It’d been the sounds of the dead that pulled him from a dream. A dream where he’d found that damned doctor and the senator’s two daughters. The one female, Shari—the talentless pop-star whore—had
thanked
him for rescuing her from the hands of Doctor Peter King. She’d thrown herself at his feet and begged forgiveness, saying that she was prepared for any punishment he deemed necessary. She wanted only to serve him and please him.

Then, the little sister whose name he couldn’t recall went into labor. In a gush, a blue-grey baby slid from between the girl’s spread legs. It looked up at him with white-filmed eyes, grasping its own umbilical cord and biting into it. The black-veined rope burst open, spewing green pus. The baby opened its mouth and cried—

Shaw had snapped awake. The stench of the undead filled his mouth and nose. Then, he heard the baby cry sound and struggled to separate the dream from reality. He felt sweat dripping down his body and sat up. That’s when he was able to see the surrounding area.

They were everywhere. A sea of bodies walking, heading east. They flowed around the building he’d sought refuge atop just before sunrise. Somewhere, down on the ground, at the base of the ladder he’d climbed, the body of a zombie dressed in a tattered nurse’s uniform was being trod into a pulp. That one had truly scared him. It’d stood in a dark, almost visually impenetrable, shadow. Just as he’d started his climb up the metal rungs bolted into the exterior of the building, that zombified nurse had grabbed him by the leg. The only thing that saved him was that it had tried to bite down on the shin guard. Shaw managed to kick free, then he jammed a knife into the temple of the walking abomination. He’d been so frightened that he climbed up and left the knife sticking out of the creature’s head.

Now he sat hunkered down, watching the flood of walking dead as they staggered past. A smell rose from them that eventually had Shaw fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit. No matter how he covered his face, the smell seeped in, seeming to soak into his pores. Before long he felt as if he’d been dipped in a rancid, oily brine of rot and filth. He began to fear that he would never be rid of the lingering stench.

The sun had long since set by the time the last of the main body of the great zombie herd passed. He could still hear stragglers bumping into things, moaning, or even worse, letting go with that horrific baby cry sound. Almost as if those things were taunting him, the shrill cry sounded from close by. It continued for several minutes, almost persistent enough to get Shaw to consider that there may indeed be an infant near.

He crept to the lip of the building’s edge, close to where he figured the sound to be coming from. He found himself looking down into a ramp that led to a metal roll-down door. All the way down at the bottom of that ramp, clawing at the door were a dozen of those things. A shaft of moonlight lit the tops of their heads. It wasn’t just one of those things doing it. Now that he was looking down directly on them he could distinctly hear one start up just as another was finishing. In a twisted way, it reminded him of a box of kittens. Each striving to be heard over the other as they mew-cried for their missing mother.

They were seemingly stuck. The pack had gone down the long ramp to the dead-end—no pun intended—and didn’t have the sense to turn around and backtrack. If nothing came by to distract them, it was conceivable that they could still be there years from now.

Shaw was contemplating the idea of going down there and killing them all. Partially for his own sanity, and partially out of mercy on their damned existence, when the distant sounds of small arms fire began. For a moment he was reminded of standing in the lobby of a movie theater while a fresh batch of popcorn was cooking. There were a few individual pops, then a small flurry, then a constant barrage that went on for what seemed like an incredibly long time.

The Basket!

Shaw did some fast mental calculating and came to a horrible conclusion that that swarm of undead must be at The Basket. They’d systematically been combing the region the past several months. Nothing could’ve evaded their detection sporting that much firepower.

Like that batch of theater popcorn, the popping lessened. Soon there were only a few single shots, then…silence. He wasn’t stupid. He’d seen how many of those things were walking in that group. He doubted that there was enough ammo in all of The Basket’s store rooms to deal with that entire mob. While it was possible that one, or even a few of his men escaped, the odds were decidedly against it. Suddenly, Charlton Shaw felt alone…terribly alone.



Reginald sat at his desk sipping from a steaming cup of coffee. Lucy’s wall rattling snores echoed from the bedroom. He adjusted the cold towel he had between his legs. Shivering slightly, then relaxing and allowing the cool relief to seep into his raw and abraded privates.

The snoring ceased suddenly and Reginald froze in mid-sip.
Please don’t wake-up
, he chanted over and over in his mind. After a loud bodily noise that he forced himself to neither process, nor try to identify, the snoring resumed and he relaxed. It was the mixture of teeth rattling noises and repugnant bodily smells coming from Lucy since she’d finally crashed that had him out of the bedroom and at his desk. Of course, this was preferable to the last sixteen-or-so hours.

He’d brought Lucy his batch of meth, nervous that he’d done it wrong. After all, her instructions had been a bit vague in places and the ingredients were a bit iffy when it came to exact amounts. Reginald Cox was a doctor and a man of science. He did not deal well with abstract generalities or approximations.

Lucy almost pounced on him when he announced what the contents of the pan he’d been carrying to be. She’d smashed and ground a chunk into powder, then, in a very unladylike manner, snorted it up one nostril. The primal grunt and howl that followed had Reginald backing towards the door. He just knew that a large dose of abuse—verbal and physical—was about to follow. Instead, she looked over at him and leered, then repeated the process with another chunk (she called them shards); this time she ingested it up the other nostril.

After another boisterously loud display, Lucy began to cross the room, peeling out of her clothing. She recited a litany of things she intended to do to him, as well as things she’d have him do to her. A few seemed more than just a little unsavory, and certainly unsanitary.

The next several hours were beyond anything he could’ve ever imagined. The sex just seemed to go on and on. Twice he’d actually fallen asleep, only to wake with her still straddling him, bucking her hips wildly. She hadn’t noticed, or at least gave no indication of it. He was certain after the second time because he distinctly remembered her shriveled and sagging breasts dangling just above his face. His next recollection, she was facing away and he was staring at a large mole on her lower back with three short, coarse, dark hours sticking out of it.

She’d gotten up a few times to “take another bump” while he lay in bed, praying that it would stop. Yet, each time she returned, she had that same expression. No doubt she thought it was sexy, but to Reginald, she simply looked constipated and confused. Her eyes appeared to vibrate in their sockets. She would kiss him, which eventually became less and less pleasant as her breath began to reek in a gagging mixture of chemical and sewage, like her guts had backed up into her throat. Then, she would slide down his body and bring him to arousal with her mouth. He resisted as long as he was able, yet, in the end, his genitals always betrayed him.

Reginald had jumped from the bed, grabbing the pistol from his drawer and running to the door. He’d peeked out to the hallway. Empty. Then, he’d slipped out and cautiously padded to the exit hatch. Locked. He tugged the door a few times for good measure. Still locked. Next, he checked each of the other living quarters. Nothing. Finally, he’d gone to the lab. Every specimen was accounted for. He even flipped on the monitor. The sea of undead faces had changed very little since yesterday. He’d seen the same faces for so long, he’d gone to the trouble of naming a few: Bert, Ernie, Elmo, Zsa-Zsa, and Cletus were still there.

He returned to the room and panicked when he couldn’t find Lucy. That is until she hit him in the shin with a broken off chair leg from under the bed. He’d yelped and tumbled to the ground clutching his shin in pain.

“It’s me, Lucy!” he yelled.

She’d scrambled out and wrapped herself around him, shivering and sobbing. Having been away from her for a bit, he hadn’t realized how bad she smelled from the sex, sweat, and chemical poisons that oozed from every pore.

He managed to get her to the shower, but only by agreeing to take one with her. Of course, this led to another of Lucy’s amorous advances which ended up with her straddling him on the toilet.

Once he managed to finally get her in bed, he’d laid beside her until she crashed into the most intense state of unconsciousness Reginald had ever seen. Looking down at her, he pondered if perhaps returning her to the lab weren’t such a bad idea. After a while, he realized that as not an option. He’d saved her, and now he was responsible for her.

After years of longing for the touch and embrace of a woman, Dr. Reginald Cox had come to a profound conclusion: it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Almost on cue, another horrendous bodily noise came from the room where Lucy lay sleeping. Not wanting to wait and see if the stench would make it out where he sat sipping his tea, Reginald got up and grabbed a pair of his scrubs from the top drawer of his dresser and headed for the lab.

Suddenly, the undead didn’t seem like such bad company.



Juan was surprisingly fast for his size and quickly outdistanced the others. He knew exactly what that commotion was. That was the sounds of a gun fight. Since he was relatively sure that they’d cleared the island of
deaders
, it left one option: Margaret.

Bounding over the ditch, he planted a hand on a fencepost and vaulted, only stumbling a little on the landing. He could hear Mackenzie calling after him, but he continued to sprint ahead. He tore up between the rows of melon vines, crossing the same field he’d first crossed the day he met Mackenzie and Margaret. His eyes flicked to the body of the dead dog on the edge of the lawn as he rounded the corner of the house.

The visible signs of a gunfight gave the front door and the area around it a pockmarked appearance. A trail of blood led up the stairs and inside. Juan burst through the door. A woman in her late teens or early twenties was crouched beside a man who was holding his side, blood seeping through his fingers. Both of them were so surprised that they never had a chance to bring up the weapons sitting beside them. Juan’s first shot caught the girl in the forehead, splattering the man sitting beside her with brain and blood. His second and third shots caught the man in the chest.

Juan stepped into the living room as two more guys came running from the direction of the kitchen. His eyes saw a pair of legs peeking out from the bathroom door just off the dining room. He didn’t have to see the body attached to know who they belonged to. One of the men was still holding a jar of Margaret’s homemade pickles in his hand.

“Looting bastards,” Juan said through clenched teeth and fired. The one holding the pickles spun, the jar exploding as the bullet blew through it and into his heart, killing him instantly. He swung his arm and fired again, catching the other man through the throat. The man fell back into the wall and slid down clutching the wound. He approached the bleeding, cowering figure and stood over him. His eyes darted to the body sprawled on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood.

“You killed an innocent woman.” Juan looked down at the man who was trying desperately to keep his life blood from pouring out between his fingers. His bloody lips moved, but no sound came out other than a wet gargle.

“Jesus, man,” JoJo breathed, stepping up beside the big Hispanic who currently had his .45 pressed on the top of the head of the guy with blood all over him.

“These fucks killed Margaret,” Juan growled, his finger tightening just a bit on the trigger.

“Mom!” Mackenzie’s voice cried from the front porch Juan heard her run up behind him and then stop. He heard her breath hitch, then he heard her wail. His vision swam as tears filled his eyes.